Pew is an engrossing, fearlessly astute story about community and fear, revolving around a silent stranger found sleeping in the church of a small American town.
Shortlisted for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize 2021
One Sunday morning, a mysterious silent figure is found sleeping in a church in an unnamed American town. The congregants call this amnesiac 'Pew' and seek to uncover who they are: their age; their gender, their race, their intentions.
Are they an orphan, or something worse? What terrible trouble is Pew running from? And why won't they speak?
Unable to agree on how to treat a person they cannot categorize - whether to adopt or imprison, help or harm them - this small town is quickly undone by Pew's terrifying silence. What remains is a foreboding, provocative, and amorphous fable about the world today: our borders and our boundaries, our fears and our woes.
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN: 9781783785193
Number of pages: 224
Weight: 162 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 13 mm
A stranger comes to town, and takes us with them into their estrangement among the denizens of a conservative religious community. The people of this community are stifling, and generous, cruel, earnest, needy, overconfident, fragile and repressive, which is to say that they are brilliantly rendered by their wise maker, Catherine Lacey - Rachel Kushner, author of, The Mars Room
I consumed it. It is the electric charge we need - Daisy Johnson, author of, Everything Under
The mercurial and electric Catherine Lacey has now conjured up an of-the-moment fable of trauma and projection - one part Kaspar Hauser, one part James Purdy, and one part Rachel Cusk. The pages shimmer with implication - Jonathan Lethem, author of, Motherless Brooklyn
''These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of... More
''These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of... More
This is a really intriguing read that manages to seem both timeless and timely in its parallels to contemporary western culture. Pew, named after the place they were found, is our virtually mute protagonist, of... More
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